Pig Newsletter - August 2021

The latest newsletter from the Teagasc Pig team focuses on removing Zinc Oxide preventive antibiotics, less than a year to go; how much do pigs cough?; WAFL 2021, and more.

View it here: Teagasc Pig Newsletter - Aug 2021 (PDF)

In this month's edition:

• Removing Zinc Oxide preventive antibiotics, less than a year to go
  The management of health in pig farms will change dramatically next year when the new EU veterinary medicine regulation is implemented (January 2022) and zinc oxide (ZnO) is banned at therapeutic doses (June 2022). In the Teagasc PDD, we are trying to understand what will happen on commercial farms once preventive antibiotics and ZnO are not available anymore (Project ZincO), and we are investing much resources in to find solutions with 6 projects ongoing (Projects PigNutriStrat, MonoGutHelath, Proswine, Milkobiome, BM-Farm, AMU-Farm) and more than 1.5 million in funding over the next 3 years.
• How much do pigs cough?
  Pigs cough for two main reasons, because dust or fumes irritate their airways or because they have a respiratory infection. The latter is a major cause of economic losses in the Irish pig industry. Coughing is a useful and easily measured clinical symptom indicating underlying problems for the pig. This article will summarise some of the main findings from the PLFpigCarc project.
• WAFL 2021
  In late August Teagasc and University College Cork (UCC) hosted the 8th International Conference on the Assessment of Animal Welfare at Farm and Group Level (WAFL), which is the first international animal welfare conference to be held in Ireland. The organising committee was made up of Keelin O’Driscoll, Amy Quinn, and Laura Boyle from the Teagasc PDD, as well as Dr. Fidelma Butler from UCC.

Find out more from the Teagasc Pig Team here or listen to episodes of The Pig Edge Podcast here